How the Dinosaurs Ate Christmas
by Night of the Living Monkey
Summary: Clara wants to see dinosaurs for Christmas and the Doctor reluctantly agrees. A not so merry chase through a swamp ensues.


The calendar says it is once again time for Night's King's yearly Christmas fanfiction. What? It doesn't? Well, ain't that a travesty! Please enjoy this anyway while that oversight is investigated and corrected.

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There were some periods of time and some corners of the universe the Doctor avoided. Or tried to. As was far too often his lot, he found himself suckered into these places and times. Sometimes it was because of a carefully orchestrated trap from a clever, sinister enemy. Sometimes it was because the TARDIS, often for idiopathic reasons, materialized in those times and places and the Doctor couldn't very well leave when evil was afoot and mysteries abounded.

And sometimes it was because his companion gave him puppy eyes and begged him to show her dinosaurs.

"Real dinosaurs, in their natural habitat, not hologram ones. Especially not hologram ones with computer viruses. Because I'm still having nightmares about the glitchy whatever-it-was-supposed-to-be that kept screaming about 'guaranteed hyphae enlargement.'"

The Doctor folded his arms. And now she had the nerve to get specific! ...Though that discount dinosaur park had been off-putting. Not to mention inaccurate.

"For educational purposes only," the Doctor relented.

Clara squealed. As a teacher, educational purposes were one of her favorite. As a human being, any purpose that got her legitimate dinosaurs was one of her favorite.

"And none of the big ones."

When the largest dinosaurs measured longer than two buses end-to-end, Clara supposed even the medium ones would be amazing enough to make every past Christmas seem like Christmas in the Cratchit household before Scrooge received his ghostly visitations.

"And strictly Triassic."

"Alright, alright. That still leaves...uh, Stegosaurus?"

"Jurassic."

"The duckbill ones?"

"Wrong direction, Clara! Those are Cretaceous!"

Flustered, Clara flapped her hands, trying to think. "That one with the sail on its back!"

The Doctor shook his head. "Not technically a dinosaur. And extinct for millions of years before the Triassic period began."

Clara sighed. "Should I just ask for mammoths instead?"

"Too late!" the Doctor exclaimed, jabbing seemingly random buttons on the TARDIS console.

While the TARDIS spun through the vortex, the Doctor took time to disappear from the console room. After promising Clara he'd be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail—and a very happy, frisky lamb at that—he took off, leaving her leaning there casually. She wondered if he was going to find her a dinosaur encyclopedia. The TARDIS did, after all, have a massive library. Or so the Doctor had said on numerous occasions. Clara had not yet been able to find it. Somehow, though, she kept nearly walking into the same swimming pool.

Before Clara could decide whether that was coincidence or if the TARDIS was purposely trying to drown her, the Doctor saved her from her thoughts. And left are laughing her head off.

"What?" he demanded.

"You're- you're _Santa Claus_!"

The Time Lord's eyebrows first rose with confusion and then sloped downward with displeasure.

"I am not."

"You're dressed like him! You've got the red suit and the sack and, oh, nice boots!" Clara guffawed.

The Doctor dropped his bag to grab the lapels of the bright red velvet coat he'd pulled from some dusty, long-lost wardrobe. "This is not Father Christmas, this is a warning to potential predators. And as for the boots, half the bloody planet's a swamp during this era."

The explanation did nothing to sober Clara. She continued to snort laughter. "I'll give you the boots, but the only thing the coat's going to do is choke the first dinosaur that tries to eat you. Which will be whatever one can stop laughing at you. So you'll be safe for a while."

"Red is a warning color!"

"Velvet's a warning fabric."

"I can turn this TARDIS around."

Clara's first impulse was to reply "You can _try_ to turn this TARDIS around but you'll probably put us on Pluto in the middle of some interstellar war between humans and sentient barnacles," but she managed to resist the temptation. It wasn't easy, given the sheer ridiculousness of the Doctor's outfit and his explanation for it, but there was the threat of losing out on dinosaurs and shivering her backside off on Pluto instead.

"What's in the bag?" she asked instead.

"A surprise I hope I don't have to use."

"Look at you, Mr. Mysterious. Just keep that handy."

The Doctor picked up his bag as the TARDIS settled in for an unusually gentle landing. Before he could give Clara any warnings or instruction, she bolted for the doors and threw them open.

Just as the Doctor had said, half the bloody planet was a swamp, and the TARDIS had come to rest in the middle of it. Or at least it looked that way to Clara. The space ship had settled on a soggy bed of ferns at the edge of a huge marsh.

Something nudged Clara's shoulder and she turned around to see the Doctor had produced a pair of rain boots from his magic sack. She hastily threw off her flats and switched to something more appropriate to the terrain.

Once Clara was better attired, she and the Doctor stepped out onto the soggy ground. The Doctor scouted around and was relieved to find what appeared to be higher, drier land on the other side of the TARDIS, though it was difficult to be completely sure thanks to the expanse of reeds, sedge, and grasses. He motioned for Clara to follow him.

They had managed a few hundred feet before the mosquitoes came for them. Or, Clara noticed, for her. While the vampiric insects lit on the Doctor's ridiculous coat, they didn't seem keen to drink.

"Do you have any bug repellent?" Clara asked as she slapped a mosquito from the side of her neck.

The Doctor was silent for a moment. Then, so quick Clara hardly saw the movement, he snatched a buzzing pest from the air and held it tight.

"There shouldn't be mosquitoes here," the Time Lord said quietly.

"Huh? 'Course there are. I saw that movie. Mosquitoes trapped in amber, dinosaur DNA, poor goat," Clara replied.

"In the Cretaceous, yes. But mosquitoes as we know them hadn't evolved in the Triassic period."

"So..."

"So back to the TARDIS before-"

"Come on, we're already here! Let's find a dinosaur I've actually heard of! Please? A triceratops or, ooh, you said those duckbill ones lived now. They can't eat us, right?"

"No, but the noise they make! It's worse than chihuahuas. It's like-" The Doctor took a profound breath and emitted a bellow that was like a tuba had mated with an elephant.

"Maybe not a duckbill one then."

Clara might have been scared straight by the Doctor's impressions, but to a pack of dinosaurs not far away, he had just rung the dinner bell. As a synchronized unit, the dinosaurs lifted their heads upon their slender necks and turned to the echoing roar they associated with a dying hadrosaur. A chirp by the pack leader sent them all surging towards the source of the sound.

The Doctor was in the middle of shooting down Clara's desire to see a pterodactyl by informing her some of them had thirty-foot wingspans and beaks lined with teeth when a rustle in the marsh grass drew his attention. He froze in mid-speech and motioned for Clara to get behind him.

"What is it?" she asked excitedly.

"If we're lucky, your most distant mammalian ancestor."

A feathered head poked from the bulrushes.

"It's a bird," Clara said.

The rest of the body emerged. It was covered in mottled brown and grey feathers, and sported a deep red cock's comb of feathers on the top of its head. Its feet were scaly and unusually large, like someone had transplanted an emu foot onto a turkey.

"It's an ugly bird," Clara clarified.

"It's not a bird," the Doctor replied.

"What is it then?"

"A very good reason to run."

"I've learned not to judge people or aliens or robots by what they look like, but Doctor, that looks like a-"

"Don't say it!"

"Turkey with arms."

"Where's Dr. Grant when you need him?" the Doctor moaned.

"You mean... That little thing..."

"Velociraptor."

And with that, all of Clara's faith in the scientific accuracy of Hollywood blockbusters was flushed down the drain.

"I can see why they changed it in the movies."

As though the dinosaur could understand them and knew its whole species had just been belittled, the raptor thrust its head forward and shrieked at the Doctor and Clara.

Clara was no expert on dinosaur communication, but she was quite sure even without fluency, she got the gist of what the raptor wanted. Namely, them, inside its belly.

"Alright, Doctor, I think I'm ready to run now," the Impossible Girl said.

"Excellent. Keep your eyes on it until I count to three. Then run with everything you've got. Ready? One, two, three!"

The Doctor and Clara pivoted and found a fence of raptors blocking their path to the TARDIS. Suddenly, even at three feet tall, the dinosaurs didn't look remotely funny anymore.

"What do we do?" Clara whispered.

The Doctor glanced from the pack in front of him to the lone raptor behind. It would be much easier to just kick that one or whack it with the sack, but even if they were to give it the slip, there was no cover for at least a mile. The raptors were at least twice as quick as the human and Time Lord, and would be all over them before they reached the meager copse of trees.

"Can you tell them to go away or something?" Clara suggested.

"I don't speak raptor," the Doctor said.

"Great, the one thing you don't speak."

"Oi! Do you think I'd fancy being around them long enough to learn it?"

"What about the bag? Anything good in there?"

The Doctor had completely forgotten about the weight slung over his shoulder and his reason for bringing it along. Which was incredibly stupid on his part, as he'd packed for precisely this sort of situation. He dropped the bag in front of him, opened it, and went questing far deeper than he had any right to be able to reach.

"Really, a bigger-on-the-inside bag? That's...actually how Father Christmas would do it. Oh my God, it all makes sense!" Clara exclaimed.

Just as Clara was figuring out the mystery children all over the world had pondered many a Christmas Eve, the Doctor found what he was looking for. He yanked his prize from the bag, held it above him, and shook it to get the raptors' attention.

"Do you want the Christmas goose? Who wants the Christmas goose? You do? Yes, you do! Go fetch!" The Doctor lobbed the bird carcass into the weeds.

Not a single velociraptor gave chase. A few of the smaller, younger pack members twitched, but remained stationary.

Bugger, the Doctor thought, he'd wasted the goose for nothing. That was supposed to be dinner at Vastra and Jenny's house. Now, always assuming he and Clara didn't provide supper for the raptor clan, they'd be treated to Strax's interpretation of a traditional Christmas dinner.

Horse.

Twelve different ways.

One of them raw.

"Anything else?" Clara asked.

"I've got a few potatoes, a small cake, a fine vintage, and a jar of smoked herring."

"Is it a large jar?"

"Relatively."

"Throw it at them!"

That was, the Doctor decided, a viable, if very low-tech, plan. He pulled the jar out and tried to decide which raptor was the pack leader and therefore best target. It was, he reckoned, the largest one sporting the brightest crest of feathers. The Doctor hurled the jar and discovered there would never be a baseball career for this regeneration.

Instead of hitting the raptor, the jar struck the ground in front of the dinosaur and didn't even have the courtesy to shatter and possibly release its fishy contents as bait. Nearly being whacked with glass didn't instill any holiday cheer in the raptor, either. Instead, feathers literally ruffled, the velociraptor leaped over the jar and, shrieking, charged the Doctor. The rest of the pack followed suit.

"RUN!" the Doctor shouted.

"WHERE?!" Clara replied.

In response, the Doctor grabbed Clara's hand and yanked her forward, towards the approaching tsunami of teeth, feathers, and claws. He raised the deflated dinner bag in front of him as a shield and successfully deflected the pack leader. A well-placed knee on the Doctor's part and a perfect punt from Clara broke the dinosaurs' line.

Punching through the raptors' first attack was a victory for the Doctor and Clara, but the TARDIS upon its little hillock was still hundreds of meters away with no shelter in between. Hand-in-hand, Time Lord and human tried to erase that distance before the raptors could come up to speed. The Doctor did the math in his head and knew it wouldn't be a clean race; the raptors were quicker than roadrunners and could propel themselves onto the backs of their prey in the same way modern lions hunted.

A raptor demonstrated its jumping prowess by striking Clara in the center of her back. The dinosaur weighed a quarter of what Clara did, but the force behind its attack sent her stumbling. She tightened her grip on the Doctor's hand as she lost her footing, acting as an anchor on him.

If sprinting wasn't going to be quick enough, him dragging Clara with the additional weight of a little Cretaceous nightmare on her back wasn't going to work any better. The Doctor stopped and like ninja Santa swung the bag at the raptor. He scored a direct hit and the dinosaur was knocked into the air.

Clara scrambled to her feet, a few punctures in her shirt but mercifully none in her skin. Once she was up, the Doctor urged her in front of him, as she hadn't been insightful enough to bring even the smallest of bludgeons.

It made no difference to the voracious pack who was in the lead and who was in the perfect position to become a chew toy. The raptors snapped at the Doctor's legs and a few desperate mule-kicks from the frazzled Time Lord weren't much of a deterrent. One tenacious raptor got its teeth into the tails of the Doctor's coat and was carted along until the fabric tore. A mouthful of synthetic fiber, something the dinosaur had never tasted before and wouldn't taste again unless it lived to be 90 million years old, distracted the predator and removed it from the chase.

Not that the loss of an individual had much of an effect on the group effort. The leader, still miffed about the earlier herring assault, had its revenge. A perfectly aimed leap allowed the velociraptor to clutch at the Doctor's shoulders with its forearms while digging the killer talon on each foot into his back.

Up until that point the Doctor had managed to hold onto his bag. Claws digging for his viscera and jaws snapping for his neck were finally enough motivation for the Doctor to free both hands. He dropped what remained of his dinner plans and grabbed two handfuls of feathers. The raptor and the Time Lord screamed in unison as they attacked each other.

Hands and superior size prevailed. The Doctor dislodged the dinosaur and denuded a portion of its body in the process. The Time Lord threw the screeching, flailing, molted beast at its mates.

Clara heard the cacophony and was in the process of turning her head when the Doctor shoved his palm between her shoulder blades. Clara fixed her eyes back on the TARDIS, which was no longer looking like a miniature.

"I'm fine, go. We're nearly there. We're, hell, we're apparently dealing with the Sun Tzu of dinosaurs," the Doctor muttered.

They were flanked. On either side, raptors closed in.

"No, I am not being pincer-maneuvered by primitive mystery meat nuggets. Not today!"

The Doctor did not speak raptor, but there was one call in his vast vocabulary that he figured might be enough to save their hides. He hadn't used it immediately for reasons that would soon be obvious, and he wasn't sure it would be enough to chase off the raptors, but as far as non-nuclear last resorts went, it was impressive.

Clara was beginning to flag from exertion, but superior Time Lord lung capacity (and thousands of years of being chased across the known and unknown universe) allowed the Doctor to both run for his life and inhale like an opera singer about to unleash the finale. He produced a high, almost bird-like squall that echoed across the swamp and the scrub-land beyond.

The cry had barely faded when it was answered by a deep, reverberating roar. There was nothing avian or mewling about it.

The effect was neither instant nor complete, but the flanking raptors forgot about their brilliant military campaign and most of the raptors from the back broke off as well. The fearless leader, however, cared more about avenging its bald spots.

Once more the velociraptor launched itself at the Doctor. It struck him just as Clara threw open the TARDIS door. She disappeared inside and, milliseconds later the Time Lord and his hitchhiker tore through as well.

Stop, drop and roll was the preferred method for extinguishing fires, but it also worked for dislodging raptors. To avoid being crushed the dinosaur was forced to let go before taking any pieces from the Doctor. It skittered away from the prostrate Time Lord and realized it was on a surface it had never before encountered.

The raptor tapped its talon on the metal floor and tilted its head like a confused dog. While it investigated its new terrain, Clara looked for something she could beat it with. She spotted a lever that looked like it could be coaxed from the console.

"No," the Doctor said, raising himself up to his hands and knees. "Not that lever, unless you don't like lights."

Clara did very much like seeing where she was walking. She forgot the lever and looked for some effect not directly attached to the console.

Before she could find something suitable, the velociraptor snarled once at the Doctor before racing down the nearest corridor. Its claws clacking against the floor echoed for a minute and then died out.

The moment Clara was sure the raptor was gone she ran to the Doctor. He was up and on his feet before she reached him.

"I'm fine." The Doctor brushed Clara off. "Don't worry about it, Strax can fix it. Might distract him long enough to keep horse off the menu. Go look out the window or you'll miss it. And I'm not bloody coming back here for at least three regenerations."

At the Doctor's prompting Clara stopped hovering and scurried over to the window. She peered out and gasped in amazement.

A Tyrannosaurus in its full glory stormed outside the TARDIS. It was enormous, dwarfing any zoo animal that had ever amazed or enchanted Clara. Though the TARDIS canceled out the noise of its roar, Clara still imagined she felt it in her bones.

"You called a T-rex," Clara breathed.

"I called a _mother_ T-rex," the Doctor expounded.

"No wonder they ran."

The Time Lord smiled. "Very few things more dangerous than a thirty foot mother with a mouth full of sabers."

"But- but what about the raptor she didn't chase away?"

The Doctor gazed absently down the corridor for a moment and then said, "I'll give it to Vastra as a pet. To make up for what became of the Christmas goose. ...If she can find it before it finds the swimming pool."

* * *

The End!

Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanzaa, happy holidays, feliz navidad, Festivus for the rest of us, etc, etc, et al.

If you spot a reference, it's likely from _Jurassic Park_.

Except Sun Tzu. He was a Chinese general and philosopher who wrote a book called _The Art of War_.

And, of course, Scrooge and the Cratchit family are from _A Christmas Carol_."

Oh, and yes, velociraptors were only about three feet tall and fossils have yielded evidence of feathers. Sometimes movies stretch the truth just a little.


End file.
